Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *

Ainu people The Ainu are an Indigenous peoples, indigenous ethnic group who reside in northern Japan and southeastern Russia, including Hokkaido and the Tōhoku region of Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Ku ...

, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East **

Ainu languages The Ainu languages ( ), sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands, and formerly in parts of the Asian mainland, i ...

, a family of languages ***

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

of Hokkaido ***

Kuril Ainu language Kuril Ainu is an extinct and poorly attested Ainu language of the Kuril Islands. The main inhabited islands were Kunashir, Iturup and Urup in the south, and Shumshu in the north. Other islands either had small populations (such as Paramushir) ...

, extinct language of the Kuril Islands ***

Sakhalin Ainu language Sakhalin Ainu is an extinct Ainu language, or perhaps several Ainu languages, that was or were spoken on the island of Sakhalin, now part of Russia. History and present situation The Ainu of Sakhalin appear to have been present on Sakhalin ...

, extinct language from the island of Sakhalin **

Ainu music Ainu music is the musical tradition of the Ainu people of northern Japan. Ainu people have no indigenous system of writing, and so have traditionally inherited the folklore and the laws of their culture orally, often through music. The oral Ai ...

Ainu cuisine Ainu cuisine is the cuisine of the ethnic Ainu people, Ainu in Japan and Russia. The cuisine differs markedly from that of the majority Yamato people of Japan. Raw meat like sashimi, for example, is rarely served in Ainu cuisine, which instead u ...

Ainu (Middle-earth) The Ainur () are the immortal spirits existing before the Creation in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe. These were the first beings made of the thought of Eru Ilúvatar. They were able to sing such beautiful music that the world was creat ...

, spirit in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium *

Ainu (insect) Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East **Ainu languages, a family of languages ***Ainu language of Hokkaido ***Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands ***Sakhalin Ain ...

, a beetle in the family

Tenebrionidae Darkling beetle is the common name for members of the beetle family Tenebrionidae, comprising over 20,000 species in a cosmopolitan distribution. Taxonomy ''Tenebrio'' is the Latin generic name that Carl Linnaeus assigned to some flour beetles ...

Äynu people The Äynu (also Ainu, Abdal or Aini) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic people native to the Xinjiang region of China, where they are an Unrecognized ethnic groups in China, unrecognized ethnic group legally counted as Uyghurs. They speak the Äynu lan ...

, of Western China **

Äynu language Äynu (also known as Abdal) is a Turkic cryptolect spoken in Western China. It is spoken by the Äynu, a nomadic people, who use it to keep their communications secret from outsiders. The grammar of Äynu is mostly Turkic, essentially Uyghur ...

See also